They Will Rise Again From the Tundra

On the heels of yesterday’s post, it looks like another active severe weather day in the central Plains.  The National Weather Service has issued a Particularly Dangerous Situation (PDS) declaration as part of Tornado Watch #356.  Northern Texas and central Oklahoma are most likely going to see an outbreak of violent storms:  the probability of at least two tornadoes forming within the watch area before 10 p.m. currently stands at 90%, and the probability of at least one strong tornado (EF2-EF5) at 70%.  Forecasts predicting the April outbreak listed similarly probabilities, and in both cases these chances are listed at higher probabilities than I can recall seeing prior to this year.  (Perhaps 2008, another uncommonly active year, saw a couple of days with higher than 60% probabilities as well.)

I was leafing through my Google Reader subscriptions this morning and found an interesting post by Andrew Revkin, who … Read more

After news of the Joplin, MO tornado—which killed at least 89 people and carved a mile-wide rut through the town—I started thinking about how remarkably active this tornado season has been.  We are way, way above the ten-year average for this time of year, both in terms of the raw number of tornadoes as well as tornado deaths.

Dr. Greg Forbes at Weather.com has written us a brief summary of these statistics (with two nice graphs) that I highly recommend reading.  We’re already in the midst of the deadliest tornado season since 1953, and we’ve logged two of the ten deadliest tornado days in U.S. history during 2011.

Forbes mentions that forecasting and severe weather warning systems have come a long way over the course of a few decades; and he cites tornadoes hitting larger population centers this year as the primary reason for the high number of … Read more

I felt it last week.  Spring.

The temperature rocketed up into the high-50s, and the atmosphere became unstable.  That night was marked by incessant thunder and lightning and a torrential rain that prompted a Flash Flood Warning form the National Weather Service in Romeoville, Illinois.  As far as severe weather, there was never anything to worry about.  By the time the storm hit, the temperature had fallen into the 40s, which is too cold to support any meaningful punch.  Strong thundestorms, for the most part, simply can’t survive in such conditions, but it was a warning of sorts.  Storm season is coming.

As a Chicago suburbanite, I’m no stranger to bad thunderstorms, nor would I consider tornadoes a rarity having been relatively close to a couple of them myself.  Hell, in the late summer of 2008, eight tornadoes touched down in Will County on the same day (a fact that … Read more